‘I don’t know,’ said Spencer. ‘Let me ask you, where were you looking for him?’
‘All over. All over campus.’
‘Around the back of Feldberg Library? The bridge?’
‘No!’ exclaimed Conni. ‘God, why would I look for him there?’
‘Did anyone see you looking for Albert around campus at one in the morning?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t think so either. Heavy snow, freezing cold, very late. Everyone was sleeping.’
Except Kristina, who was dying.
‘You sure no one saw you?’
‘I’m pretty sure.’
‘Yes. Not so good.’
Silence. Then, hesitating, stuttering, she said, ‘That’s the truth, that’s what happened.’
Spencer was getting a headache. This had been a long day for him. At nine o’clock in the evening, he was usually finished with work. This girl in front of him, small, perky, cute, was giving him a huge headache with her nonanswers.
Suddenly he remembered a small girl hurrying into Hinman Hall earlier. What did he remember about that girl? The size certainly matched. What else? The coat – she wore a jacket. Yes, a jacket with a white D on the back. That’s it.
He asked Conni to show him her coat. It was a Dartmouth jacket. Realizing that ninety percent of the students wore Dartmouth jackets, Spencer nonetheless couldn’t shake off the feeling that the girl who had hurried past a crowd and an ambulance was Conni Tobias.
‘All right, back to Albert. You spent the night together?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the following morning?’
‘We got up, went to Thayer for breakfast, and then left for Long Island.’
‘Remember seeing Kristina Wednesday morning?’
Conni thought about it, or pretended to think about it. ‘No.’
No, of course not, thought Spencer.
‘Did you see Jim that morning?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see Kristina’s dog?’
‘Oh, yes. We took him with us.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. We felt bad for him.’
‘Why?’ Spencer wasn’t about to give this up.
‘We thought it would be fun for him at my house.’ A forced smile. ‘We have a nice backyard.’
I’m sure you do, Spencer thought. I’m sure you do, all manicured like exquisite nails. Leaves all picked up, bushes trimmed. Topiary bushes, maybe.
‘Did you call your mother and ask her if it would be okay to bring a dog with you?’
Conni waved him off. ‘Nah, my mom doesn’t mind. When Kristina came with us for Christmas two years ago, we brought Aristotle.’
‘Constance, you took Aristotle and didn’t tell Kristina you were taking him?’
‘I left her a note.’
‘You left her a note that you were taking her dog with you?’
‘She knew the dog would be happy with us.’
‘Yes, but how could you just take the dog without telling her?’
‘Well, Albert mentioned that Kristina seemed reluctant to keep the dog with her for Thanksgiving because she didn’t know what she’d be doing. She’s at work all the time, and at practice. In any case, we didn’t think she’d mind at all. I thought she was kind of hoping someone would offer.’
Spencer thought very carefully about what he’d just heard. Finally he asked, ‘How would Albert know Kristina was reluctant to keep Aristotle with her?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Conni, and her voice became uncertain.
‘Do you know if she had any plans at all for Thanksgiving?’
‘No, I don’t. She said something about a girl she was tending to who was supposed to have twins over the holidays.’
‘At Red Leaves?’
Conni nodded. ‘How’d you know?’
Thinking that these kids badly needed a crash course in who was the interrogator and who the interrogated, Spencer said, ‘That doesn’t sound very busy to me. Why would she be reluctant to keep her dog? She’d be staying right here.’ God, and I thought she’d be going home to her family, Spencer thought. As it turned out, we were both here for the holidays. Except that she was under three feet of snow.
Spencer clenched his fists and brought them under the table to lay them, still clenched, on his lap. Nothing would’ve changed. I was already too late.
‘Kristina always felt better when we were around to pick up the slack of walking Aristotle. That’s why she never locked her door, you know.’
‘I didn’t know. She never locked her door?’
‘No, never,’ said Conni, flushing. Spencer noticed.
‘So you took her dog, left her a note, and left. When did you come back?’
‘Monday afternoon. We kind of blew off our classes,’ Conni said sheepishly.
‘Did you return the dog to Kristina?’
‘Well, actually we gave him to Jim.’
‘Had anyone seen Kristina?’
‘Not me.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘Not at all.’
‘That was Monday. Did you see her Tuesday?’
‘No!’
‘Did you see her Wednesday?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see her earlier today?’
‘No.’
‘I see. Well, having not seen her for four days, and having not seen her before Thanksgiving, did you at any moment get the least bit concerned?’
‘No, not really.’
‘How often did you usually see her?’
‘Oh, every day.’ There was a long pause. ‘We were always together. She was really like my best friend at Dartmouth.’ But Conni said it without effort, without conviction, and without the remorse that should’ve flowed like tears at the thought of having one’s best friend dead. The kind of tears that had flowed earlier tonight. She dabbed at her dry eyes, hoping it would help. Conni looked at Spencer’s face. It obviously hadn’t.
Spencer continued, ‘So usually you see her every day, but now you haven’t seen or heard from her in over a week, and you don’t get worried?’
‘No, like I said, she would sometimes disappear and no one would know where she was.’
She really disappeared good and proper this time, didn’t she, Conni? thought Spencer, squinting at her.
‘Conni,’ he said, ‘what are you hiding?’
‘Hiding?’ she said, in a voice higher than her usual soprano. ‘Not hiding anything.’
‘Nothing, Conni?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You walked past a crowd of people earlier tonight, didn’t you, walked past an ambulance without even stopping?’
‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Was it you, yes or no?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Oh, me … no, I don’t think it was me. I don’t remember a crowd of people. No, not really.’
‘Ah. When I spoke to Albert, he told me when you had come to his room, you still had your jacket on.’
Spencer almost felt bad for her.
‘Oh, yes, well,’ she said nervously. ‘I remember, yes, I think I did, come – you know – I might’ve been too busy to – you know – stop, I meant to, it was very interesting, I was just – in a … you know – hurry.’
The more flustered Conni became, the calmer Spencer became. He leaned back and folded his hands across his chest.
‘I’m curious,’ he said. ‘How is it possible to walk past a commotion with ambulances, police cars, crowds, and not stop and ask what happened?’
Conni had no answer other than an anxious shrug of the shoulders. Spencer was getting increasingly irritated by her. Her cutesy-pie fidgets were getting on his nerves. He had nearly forgotten his annoyance with Jim, who was nothing compared with her.
Breathing in, Spencer said, ‘A few more things, Constance.’
Spencer preten
ded to write in his notebook. Actually, he was making straight, short, hard marks with his felt pen.
Then he looked up at her. ‘That’s a nasty scratch on your face.’
She touched herself quickly below the eye. Spencer noticed her hands were unsteady. ‘Oh, this,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing.’ Before he had a chance to ask her, Conni said, ‘My brother and I were playing over the weekend. I kind of got scraped up.’
‘I see that. Looks painful.’
‘Nah. It’s nothing.’
Spencer leaned into the table to get a closer look, and Conni moved back almost imperceptibly. That’s all Spencer wanted to see, her moving back. He’d already taken a very good look at the scratches.
‘Conni, let me ask you something. Did you kill Kristina Kim?’
She giggled and then became gravely serious. ‘No, of course I didn’t, lieutenant.’
‘Detective,’ said Spencer.
‘Detective.’ Conni’s blue eyes smiled at Spencer.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You won’t mind giving us a fingerprint and hair and blood sample, will you?’
Becoming visibly nervous, Conni said, ‘Hair and blood? What for?’
‘Police procedure. Just routine,’ Spencer assured her. ‘Nothing to worry about. I’m going to make Ray Fell, one of our patrolmen, give his hair and blood sample too.’ He was only kidding about Ray, for Will’s benefit mostly, but Conni was not amused. And Will just snickered. ‘Don’t worry, Conni,’ Spencer said, getting up. ‘Albert and Jim volunteered their prints and blood.’
‘They did? Jim did?’
‘Sure. They want to cooperate,’ Will said.
‘Is there some reason you’d prefer not to do it?’ asked Spencer.
‘Of course not, of course not,’ said Conni, on the way out the door.
While Will was fingerprinting Conni and taking a blood and hair sample from her as he had from Jim and Albert, Spencer went to talk to Jim.
Jim looked awful. Spencer sat down next to him.
‘Just a couple more questions, Jim, and then you can go home. I talked to Conni, who told me that she called your room around one in the morning and you weren’t there.’
Spencer waited for a response. When there wasn’t any, Spencer cleared his throat.
Jim spoke. ‘I was there. I just turned the phone off.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I didn’t want anybody calling me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Jim said, ‘I was upset, mad, whatever. I just wanted to be left alone.’
‘Who were you afraid might call you?’
‘I don’t know. Kristina. Albert. Whoever.’
‘Surely if they needed to talk to you they could just come to your room?’
‘There was nothing I could do about that. But I could turn my phone off.’
‘I see,’ said Spencer standing up. ‘Is the phone turned back on?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what you’re saying is on the night of your ex-girlfriend’s murder, somebody tried to reach you and couldn’t.’
Jim didn’t say anything. Spencer left the room.
‘So what do you think, detective?’ said Will to Spencer when they were alone in the hallway.
‘I think I’m going to go home, Will, and collapse into my chair. What do you think?’
‘I think I’m going to go home and collapse into my bed,’ Will said.
‘Drive the kids back first, will you?’
Spencer headed home feeling the day in his bones. He thought of stopping for a nightcap at Murphy’s Tavern. He didn’t want to be drinking alone. But he didn’t want to be talking to anyone either. And at Murphy’s, everybody knew him. Whether he wanted to or not, he would have to do some talking. Tracy this, Tracy that. Given the choice between drinking alone and talking, Spencer went home.
He thought of calling his mother. He missed her. He had missed his mother most of his life. He didn’t blame her for it, he just missed her. The emptiness Kristina’s death brought him made him colder, made him want to call home, hear his mother’s voice, hear his father in the background, saying, ‘Can I? Can I? Can I talk to my son now?’
Mom, he wanted to say, if I’m found dead, promise me you’ll come and not leave me to lie on a metal gurney in a drawer.
Spencer’s throat hurt.
His tiny apartment was dark and sparsely furnished. In the bedroom, a frameless bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and in the living room, an old couch, a TV, a coffee table, and – his only housewarming purchase – a plush La-Z-Boy chair.
Plopping himself into the La-Z-Boy, Spencer reached down to the floor and lifted up a bottle of whiskey. Good old-fashioned Jack Daniel’s. He was simple in his drinking taste. He was not a wine drinker, he was not really a beer drinker. He liked whiskey.
Spencer thought of drinking straight from the bottle, but two things stopped him. It did not look good for a detective-sergeant to be seen by God drinking straight from the bottle, and two, he remembered the bottle of Southern Comfort on the floor of Kristina’s room, a bottle and no glass.
So he got up and went into his so-called kitchen – really just a little enclave with a stove and fridge – and got himself a plastic glass that said, Look Who’s Thirty, from a birthday party the guys in the department had thrown him six months ago, and brought it back to the chair. Taking a swig, Spencer let his head fall back and his eyes close. Immediately the image of Kristina’s black boots shot up, black against the white snow. Black and quiet, yet … screaming. Screaming for answers, screaming for help, screaming for life.
Except she hadn’t screamed. Spencer was willing to bet a week’s salary the autopsy would show there hadn’t been much struggle in Kristina’s last meeting with death.
Eyes still closed, Spencer took a long sip of whiskey and swilled it around his mouth. After midnight on Wednesday, November 24, Kristina Kim emptied a bottle of Southern Comfort, undressed to the bone, ruffled the hair of her dog, and in her new black leather boots walked out into the snow onto the bridge, onto the stone wall. She walked to the end of the bridge, jumped off the ledge, and then instead of going back home, walked on farther into the woods, lay down on her back into the snow, legs together, arms spread out as if learning to fly, closed her eyes, and died.
Spencer opened his eyes and looked around his dark living room for a few minutes, at the shadows on walls, at the dim light coming from Allen Street, at the square shape of the TV.
Then he got up, threw on his parka, and left the house.
He walked quickly, looking mostly at the snow on the ground and at his feet. He walked straight down past the Dartmouth Green, past Sanborn Library, and made a left onto Tuck Mall. An old Dartmouth cemetery was on the left. The streetlights near the cemetery were broken, and Tuck Mall looked ominously lit by a few yellow bulbs on the right. Tuck School of Business was right in front of him, but he needed to get behind it, so he hung a left, walked past the Feldberg parking lot, past a common field in front of Hinman and McLane halls, and saw the bridge in front of him. Exposed, bare, dark. There was a streetlight at the head of the bridge and one on the other end. The middle of the bridge wasn’t well lit. Spencer looked to his right. The tall glass windows of Feldberg Library shone white light on the trees and the snow and the bridge. Spencer saw students behind those windows, peering into their books. Thoughtfully, Spencer looked at the windows and the students, and then at the bridge.
He took a few steps forward and then leaned over the ledge. It was pitch black, he couldn’t see a thing, but he knew there was a steep slope running down to the concrete drive below. Spencer slowly walked across the bridge, touching the rough stone of the wall, and then slowly walked back. Checked his watch. It had taken him ninety seconds. He walked to the middle of the bridge and looked up at Feldberg. He saw the windows and the students clearly; if they pressed their faces against the glass, they could see him just as clearly.
He walked back to the far en
d and tried to lean over the side. He couldn’t – the ledge was too high at this end. Not believing what he was about to do next, Spencer walked back to the start of the bridge, where the wall only came up to his upper thighs, and jumped up, checking his watch. Snow covered the ledge. Spencer hoped the snow wasn’t slippery, nor crusted with ice. He slowly inched his way along the ledge to the darkness and conifers on the other side. His arms were out for balance, and he stepped very carefully onto the hard snow. Finally, he was there. Checking his watch again, Spencer discovered it had taken him over two minutes to walk the wall.
He jumped down, and with his racing heart went around Feldberg, into the darkness behind it. His steps were deliberate and hesitant, for he could not imagine anything being so eerily quiet, so still, so black. The trees didn’t move; he just saw their outlines and shadows. There was hardly any light coming from Feldberg. The stairway lights had been turned off. Spencer couldn’t see the path, couldn’t see the conifers, couldn’t see the police tape up ahead. Nothing. He listened to the still darkness, saw the immobile trees. They know, Spencer thought. They know what happened. Look how quiet they are; they’re standing there, thinking, We’re not saying. No one’s asking us. We’re not talking. But we know.
His chest was heaving. He heard noise, human noise. It was coming from seventy-five feet below on Tuck Drive; Spencer knew that intellectually. Emotionally, however, the voices were in the woods, they were drawing closer, and they were coming for him. There was someone in the woods, in the tall dark trees, hiding out, waiting for him. Standing there, Spencer felt himself one step closer to death. One day, one month, one year.
He couldn’t even turn around. Backing up the path as fast as he could without tripping over his feet, Spencer put his hand on his chest to steady his heart. He was panting. When he was at the bridge, he turned around and walked as fast as he could back home.
Fifteen minutes later, back in his chair, Spencer swallowed his drink in big, hungry gulps. The whiskey burned his throat.
What would possess a naked woman to step into the darkness? Wasn’t she cold? Didn’t she want to go back home?
Spencer willed his eyes to stay open. Had someone closed Kristina’s eyes? Had someone closed her eyes to make it look like an accident? A killer wouldn’t close his victim’s eyes. Killers weren’t usually this sensitive. But if her eyes were closed, it might look like she just fell asleep. The killer might have been someone extremely considerate, or extremely calculating.